The GHZ Forum

..Oh, and uh, Sonic's too.

So.. how did you first meet the Hedgehog?

It was 1991. I was six. My parents took me to Toys R Us and told me to look around for anything I might want for Christmas. I looked around at the Darkwing Duck action figures.. Meh. I had almost the whole collection. Checked out some NES games, couldn't find anything I wanted all that much. Then I saw Sonic the Hedgehog on display. My jaw hung open at the vibrant, 16-bit Graphics. The NES couldn't produce visuals like that. I laughed at Sonic's shoes. I called them "Clown shoes" because they looked so big. I loved how Sonic's feet went in a circle when he ran. Then he went through that loop. That was the clencher. I needed that game. I needed a SEGA Genesis. I think I threw a fit when my parents said it was time to go, because I didn't want to leave the store without buying that game.

I tried to be on my best behavior that winter so Santa would get me a SEGA. I acted like a lunatic when I opened it on Christmas morning. Thus began my lifelong love affair with Sonic and SEGA.

I'm sure we've done this thread before, but oh well. It was early in the summer of 1991 and this commercial was on TV at a friend's house. As proud, 11-year-old NES players, quite unimpressed with the Altered Beast demo at the small-town local Bi-Mart, we were not sold.

Later that summer I had moved 300 miles away to an even smaller town where I didn't know anybody. Despite my initial skepticism I went in with a couple recently-met neighbor kids on a Genesis rental with Sonic for a weekend gaming marathon and I was a changed person. I was completely overwhelmed by how different the game played from anything I'd played before, how good it looked, how charming Sonic was as a character, the whole shebang. As soon as I stopped playing I drew this awful picture, and I stopped collecting Ninja Turtles so I could save for a Genesis--the effect on my life really cannot be understated!

G.Silver wrote:I'm sure we've done this thread before, but oh well.

Yes I know. I just figured now would be an appropriate time to revisit the subject, given the occasion.

Christmas Day, 1991. The coldest winter I can remember. I'd been called in to collect a body. Normally I don't work holidays, but they told me Santa'd make it worth my while. A routine job, they said - pills and vodka, nothing messy. Hey, I thought, it's Christmas. Why not? It's not like I got a family to spend it with. (Mine is a lonely business.)

I moved a lot of stiffs in my time, but that one stank the worst. Guy must've been there for weeks. Months, maybe. (Not that I could tell all this myself - my nostrils quit in self-defence years ago. I just had to look at the faces of the others to tell.) And he was huge. I'm talking walrus dimensions here. Took me and two other guys - all of 'em green (with nausea and inexperience) - to peel him off the couch. He left behind a pool of maggots swimming in the well his rotting behind had made in the leather.

"Well," I said, when the others had finished throwing up their Christmas gravy, "we'd better get this sucker in the van." I took a hold of him under his fat, cold arms. "Someone take his legs."

But he was too big for even the three of us to carry, and there was no point in even trying the stretcher.

"What do we do, boss?" asked New Kid #2.

"We'll take the elevator."

"No disrespect, boss," said #2, "but this guy ain't gonna fit in the elevator. The three of us could barely fit in that thing on the way up here."

I thought about it.

"There's nothing else for it," I said. "We'll have to roll him."

"Down five flights of stairs?"

"You got any better ideas, kid?"

It took the best part of an hour. The place was quiet 'cause of the holiday, and the only person we saw was a woman taking her dog out of the apartment for a walk. I threw my coat over the stiff - it was like hiding a tank with a handkerchief - and wished her happy holidays.

"You too," she said warmly. But she froze. "I say. Do you smell something odd in here?"

That's when I realised the dog was a guide dog.

"I do indeed, ma'am," I said. "It's the pipes. That's why we're here. To fix the pipes."

"Oh, jolly good," said the woman. "Well, don't work too late. It is Christmas, after all."

We waited until we heard the creak of the lobby door before we carried on with the job. It wasn't until we got to the bottom that we saw the left hand was missing two fingers and a thumb.

"Please, boss," said New Kid #1. "It's Christmas. We'll say he was like that when we found him."

"You think the autopsy's gonna agree with you? No. In twenty years of doing this job I've never brought home a body without everything it was born with. Nobody goes home until we find those fingers."

I stood with the stiff while New Kids 1 and 2 ran up and down the stairs looking. They came back empty-handed. So to speak.

"You check the apartment?" I said.

They nodded. "Nothing."

"Then what in damnation happened to -"

I stopped.

"Of course," I said. "The dog. The blind woman's dog. He must've bitten them clean off."

Anyway, that's the story of how I discovered Sonic the Hedgehog.

Blahblahblah 1993 blahblahblah my cousin had a Master System blahblahblah Sonic 1 blahblahblah possibly the first videogame I have ever played blahblahblah good times.

I actually got into the game really late. I remember playing a demo with Mushroom Hill at Target, and asking for a Sega Genesis for my next birthday. Before that, I remember, just barely, playing Palmtree Panic at the home of my dad's college roommate.

Anyway, Happy 20th, Dr. Eggman! You have admittedly aged well!

The phrase "Sonic is what got me into video games" might feel a tiny bit cliché, but even so, that's the way it was with me. I first became a fan of Sonic through AoStH, and i never gave a crap about video games until i saw a friend of mine playing Sonic 2, which i of course initially was interested in solely because it allowed me to control my favorite cartoon character. I quickly realized how fun the game was though, and began wondering "Hmm, maybe some of those games without Sonic can actually be kinda good as well? Who knows, maybe there are in fact even better games than the ones with Sonic?". Turned out the former was certainly true, but in my honest opinion, the latter wasn't.

I can't remember too well. I definable played Sonic 2 before one. I was a Nintendo user at the time so I would have borrowed or played it at a friends.

This franchise really only provided me with a decent fan community to hang around. Since Sonic-Cult is dead, this is really the last Sonic place I hangout at. Sega forums is just too young and I'm glad Sega's forums are down on Sonic's 20th birthday. It feels so appropriate.

I'm pretty sure the first time I ever played video games (that I remember) was Alex Kidd and Sonic (but mostly Alex Kidd, to my memory) on a friend's Master System down the road.

At some later point I had a friend with a Game Gear and played a bunch courtesy of him.

Later still some family friends in the country had a Mega Drive on which I played Sonic 1.

Somewhere amidst all this I got a Game Gear of my own. I wouldn't get a Mega Drive till much later.

I remember in my first year of school doing a very primitive drawing of Sonic in Green Hill (not even slightly as awesome as G. Silver's), so I'd definitely caught the bug by that point. I would go on to follow Sonic the Comic for years (before giving it up at some point for a reason I can't remember), spend far too much time drawing the characters (getting bored after a while only to have a resurgence when Adventure came out), eventually register on a forum called The Sonic Foundation (my second forum after The Pokémasters) where I would experience my first romance, leave there and later register on The Sonic Center and compete in Sonic Rush time-attack for a while, and finally settle into the vague sense of jadedness that we all now share here.

Happy Birthday Robotnik!

http://www.sega.com/news/?n=5191

In celebration of Sonic's 20th Anniversary, SEGA announced today that Sonic will be returning to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade this year.

I also became familiar with the game via a Sega Genesis I got for Christmas 1991, replacing the ol' NES we had. Nothing much else to say that I didn't already say in a similar thread.

To celebrate, I played through yesterday all four "core" 16-bit Sonic titles (1, 2, 3, and Knuckles) as just Sonic by himself. I would've played Sonic CD, but I just played that a little while ago.

Okay, this is funny. Today Sonic X is featured on the front page of Hulu to commemorate his 20th anniversary. The viewer is invited to "Watch some Sonic X to see if his age has taken its toll."

On a somewhat related note, it seems that all but the final episode are now available in their original Japanese versions with subtitles on the site.

Woah, really? That's actually kind of special, considering all that's existed of the "third" season up till now has been the english dub and chinese VCDs. Why would the the last episode be unavailable, though?

Popcorn wrote:Christmas Day, 1991.

Thems some pointless parentheses, son. I laughed, though.

Guess who forgot to return the favor.

Haha, that's actually pretty cold.

I guess Nintendo didn't think Sonic's 20th was noteworthy >.<

Le's see... My Sonic tale? Hmm. I remember going with a friend to a nearby mall to pick up a Genesis. He had to show my dad and I where the EB was. I think that particular one was recently closed down.
I believe I got the system that came with Altered Beast, along with Golden Axe 2. I may have played Sonic 2 (at that friend's house) before Sonic 1, I can't recall.That time is a bit hazy, since I was only about 8.

I definitely got Sonic 2 for Christmas, though. I remember looking at the back of the box after unwrapping it.
It must've been Christmas of '92, because my mom tells me she had of heck of a time finding a copy.

I got an imported Dreamcast in December of '98. It was delivered on Christmas Eve, and it was snowing. I happy happily stumbled my way through the game, not understanding a bit of Japanese.

Crowbar wrote:Haha, that's actually pretty cold.

I have much more respect for Mario as a franchise now.

Would it have been so hard to convey a simple "20th Happy Sonic!"?

Bit late, but I wanna say I'm one of the weirdos whose first experience with the franchise was on the Master System. In Europe it was pretty common that people played the Master System version of Sonic 1 as kids, especially if they were from a lovely working class background like myself.

I thought it was the "first" game until I was older actually. Whoops!

It's still a pretty good game though to me, partly influenced by the Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack and partly because it has some slow paced, but skillful platforming and fairly memorable boss fights.

James McGeachie wrote:Bit late, but I wanna say I'm one of the weirdos whose first experience with the franchise was on the Master System. In Europe it was pretty common that people played the Master System version of Sonic 1 as kids, especially if they were from a lovely working class background like myself.

I thought it was the "first" game until I was older actually. Whoops!

It's still a pretty good game though to me, partly influenced by the Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack and partly because it has some slow paced, but skillful platforming and fairly memorable boss fights.

I really liked 8-bit Sonic 1. It was as if they took a bunch of scrapped ideas from the 16-bit version and made it into something great.

I like it too. It didn't make a huge impression on me on the Game Gear, but when I got to go back and play the Master System version without the cropped screen real-estate, I really enjoyed it. Same, although to a lesser extent, with Sonic 2 8bit.

If just it was not so terribly hard. Sonic 2 is a breeze compared to it (only speaking Master System versions of course; I have no idea why you would want to waste your time on the Game Gear ones); especially Labyrinth Zone with its painfully slow motions and the Orbinauts placed in the most inconvenient spots is a nightmare.

You think the first Master System game is harder than the second one? Why?

P.P.A. wrote:I have no idea why you would want to waste your time on the Game Gear ones

Agreed, especially in Sonic 2's case, where they made all kinds of stupid changes that arguably made it much worse.